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Cerner Corporation has received 510(k) clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration to market its Health Network Architecture (HNA) Millennium Blood Bank Transfusion (BBT) application. Cerner now offers a full complement of integrated clinical laboratory automation tools built on a common architecture. Cerner's transfusion software automates clinical laboratory processes related to the donation, testing, and distribution of whole blood and blood products. It is one of the applications in Cerner's PathNet Laboratory Information System family of automation solutions that enable health organizations to fully automate the clinical and management processes of their laboratories.

The Hemocare Division of Mediware Information Systems, Inc. has bought the LifeTrak blood center software package developed y Carter BloodCare. The LifeTrak package consists of management systems for donor, laboratory, and distribution and has been used at Carter BloodCare center for over three years. LifeTrak is a comprehensive system with a Windows NT/95/98 application and a database server running on a Unix/Oracle platform.

Immucor, Inc. has introduced its Ready-id.com web site, a commercial web site available to assist transfusion service laboratories with antibody analysis, continuing education, reference case follow-up, and Internet searches. Ready-id.com's antibody analysis module offers transfusion services the online ability to simply and quickly score the reaction onto an easy-to-use results page, and within seconds attain the antibody probabilities. The reagents and labor costs associated with the in-house testing is $25 are combined with the $10 analysis charge for Ready-id.com.

iScribe has developed a mobile, hand-held, wireless technology that allows healthcare professionals to enter and transmit prescriptions, order laboratory tests and capture billing charges at the point of care. iScribe provides physicians with access to critical information when they are actually seeing a patient and lets them communicate electronically with multiple participants in the healthcare industry. iScribe is device- and communication platform-independent. Therefore, it works with multiple types of hand-held devices, laptops and desktop computers. iScribe's product uses a pocket-sized wireless device that communicates via radio frequency or cellular signal to a secure Local Area Network or Wide Area Network.

Eleven U.S. healthcare companies have agreed to collaborate in electronic commerce solutions with Premier Health Exchange, a subsidiary of Premier, Inc. The agreement will make it easier and less costly for hospitals, physicians, and other health services providers to obtain the information they require to make informed purchasing decisions, using the Internet to create efficiencies in managing the supply chain. The e-commerce relationships are with Agfa Corporation, AmeriSource Corporation, Bayer Corporation, Becton, Dickinson and Company, Fisher HealthCare, Glaxo Wellcome plc, Mallinckrodt Inc., 3M, Agilent, Alliant Foodservice, and Allegiance Healthcare. Each works collaboratively with Premier to assure integration between each company's Internet-based order management system and the Premier WebCat catalog. The catalog was deployed earlier tin 1999 to provide Premier's members with information about the approximately 400,000 products available under group contracts.

Information Technology and Healthcare - October 1999
Information Technology and Healthcare - September 1999